Showing results by publisher "Two Roads" in All Categories

In the aftermath of Jo Cox's tragic death in 2016, her husband, Brendan Cox, urged us to remember Jo's life and what she stood for and not the manner of her death. In this moving and impassioned portrait of Jo - as daughter, mother, wife, sister, MP and activist - we see how much she gave and how much more she had to give, and her legacy of values and beliefs which will live on.

London had Sherlock Holmes. The dark alleys of Edinburgh had Inspector McLevy. Known as the father of forensics and a likely influence on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, real-life police inspector James McLevy is here reinvented by David Ashton in a thrilling mystery - the third in a series - set in dark, violent Victorian Edinburgh. Halloween 1881, Edinburgh, and the dead are restless. In respectable Edinburgh society, beautiful young American spiritualist Sophia Adler is causing a furore with her dramatic séances.

Amy Butcher was an accomplished professor, mentor and writer, but in her own home, she was embarrassed and emotionally burdened by an abusive relationship. Exhausted and terrified of her partner's behaviour, Amy reached out to Instagram celebrity Joy 'Mothertrucker' Wiebe. Joy was a 50-year-old wife and mother and the nation's only female ice road trucker, a woman who maneuvered big rigs through the Alaskan wilderness along the deadliest road in America. Joy was everything Amy wanted to be: independent, fearless and in charge of her life in a landscape dominated by men.

'Congratulations on the resurrection of your life,' a colleague wrote to Emily Rapp Black when she announced the birth of her second child. The line made Emily pause. Her first child, Ronan, had died before he turned three years old from Tay-Sachs disease, an experience she wrote about in her first book, The Still Point of the Turning World. Since that time her life had changed utterly: she had left the marriage that fractured under the terrible weight of her son's illness, remarried the love of her life, had a flourishing career and given birth to a healthy baby girl. 

Maddy is 16. Deeply curious, wry and vivacious, she's poised at the outset of adulthood. She has loyal friends, a mother with whom she's unusually close, a father she's never met, devoted grandparents, and a crush on a boy named Jack. Maddy also has cancer. Hungry for experience despite living in the shadow of illness, Maddy seeks out her first romantic relationship, ponders philosophical questions, finds solace in music and art, and tracks down her father, Antonio.

After an illustrious career spanning the 20th century, legendary journalist Clare Hollingworth died in Hong Kong, aged 105, in January 2017. She was famous for getting 'the scoop of the century': the outbreak of the Second World War. From witnessing the first aerial bombings against England in the First World War through Hitler's Blitzkrieg, Clare's résumé included desert war in North Africa, civil war in Greece, terrorism in Jerusalem, naming Philby as the Third Man, and guerrilla warfare in Vietnam and Borneo.

After serving as a nurse in WW2, Molly Corbally joined the brand-new NHS and became one of the first official District Health Visitors, attending to mothers and babies from all walks of life in the picturesque village near Coventry she came to call home. Social work was uncharted territory at the time, and Britain was very much worse for wear - TB, polio, measles and whooping cough were just some of the hazards new babies faced. Social conditions could also add to the problems, when poverty and alcoholism were rife. 

Meet the Augustts...a loving Irish family who, like all families, are a bit complicated. But they are bound together by their love for each other and the way their words shape their world. Things become a little more complicated when the mother has a stroke, and the force of nature who is Granny Mae-Ann comes to try to take charge to keep the family together. She has a job on. There's the son, Jacob, with all his words trapped in his head by The Autism; the father, Mickey, struggling to express himself at all; and Jenny, the daughter, quietly writing it all down to try to make sense of it.

Trimming a parrot's beak, emptying a dog's anal glands and neutering a cat - then lunch - followed by some tricky horse dentistry, amputating a lamb's leg and calming a distressed client.... It's all in a day's work if you're a vet: a delicate balance of managing animal welfare and ethics, educating people in pet ownership and aligning their expectations with real-life outcomes. As a job, it spans everything from managing the heartbreak of euthanasia, to informing owners that under no circumstances should they take their dog's worming pills, even if they're sure they have worms.

Delphine Vimond flees to Paris after being cast out from her home in Rouen when her father is disgraced. Into her life tumbles Chancery Smith, apprentice printer from London, sent to discover the mysterious author of potentially seditious papers marked only D. In a battle of wits with the French censor, Henri Gilbert, Delphine and Chancery set off in a frantic search for D's author. But who is he—and does he even exist?

The secret stories of what leaves mean - and what they mean to us. Leaves are one of nature's marvels. We watch them turn red in autumn, make medicine from them, invent folklore around them and mark the passing of time by them. But how do they grow? Why are they the shapes they are? What makes an evergreen, evergreen? The Lives of Leaves is a beautiful compendium of the tales, science and history of leaves from all around the world. It's the story of what they do, what we do with them, and why we can't do without them.

Lily Crawford and Jeanie Taylor, from very different backgrounds, are firm friends from their childhoods in Kirkcudbright. They share their ambitions for their futures, Lily to be an artist, Jeanie to be a dancer. The two women's eventful lives are intertwined. In the years before the First World War, the girls lose touch when Jeanie runs away from home and joins a dance company, while Lily attends The Mack, Glasgow's famous school of art designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh. 

New Year celebrations are underway in Edinburgh, and the Hogmanay crowd is baying for blood at an illegal boxing match at the Foul Anchor tavern. When ruthless Moneylender Donny Lapsley is found murdered after the fight, suspicions immediately turn to Boxer Rab Donnachie, whose unconscious body is found next to the victim. But Inspector McLevy is not convinced.

When the body of Thomas Forsythe, tobacco merchant and lay preacher, is discovered near the waters of Leith, Inspector James McLevy is called to investigate. As Christmas approaches, McLevy's investigations lead him to the dockside taverns of Edinburgh and deep into the belly of the beast himself.

When the body of a young woman is discovered in an alleyway, Inspector James McLevy recognises the victim immediately: Peggy Ambrose, former employee at Edinburgh's best bawdy hoose, the Just Land. Peggy had left the Just Land under a cloud, accused of theft, but no one knows where she went next. Working with the inimitable Jean Brash, Inspector McLevy investigates the murder, from the drinking dens of Edinburgh to a mysterious and secret society.

At the Old Ship in Edinburgh, New Year's Day celebrations are well underway. Nobody pays attention when Dutchman Isaac Caspar enters the tavern - until he collapses in the doorway, dead. Newly arrived in Leith on the good ship St Elmo, Caspar is a stranger in town. A search of his cabin reveals a curious item: a picture of the famous Hartjammer pearl, stolen in Amsterdam some months before. Is there a connection between the robbery and the murder? Inspector McLevy is determined to find out.

At Waverley Station late at night, the body of a man is discovered in the corner of a train compartment. Inspector McLevy's investigations into the murder of the mysterious Count Borromeo, lead him to the Just Land, the best bawdy-hoose in Edinburgh and the pride and joy of Jean Brash.

A thrilling short story featuring Inspector James McLevy and Jean Brash, available exclusively in audio. Suspected of poisoning her husband, a prominent judge, Judith Pearson writes to Inspector James McLevy begging for his help. With the evidence pointing overwhelmingly to the victim's wife and investigating Inspector Adam Dunsmore ready to make an arrest, McLevy is in a race against time to uncover the truth. You can enjoy more from the world of James McLevy with the Inspector McLevy series and the Jean Brash Mysteries, narrated by David Ashton and Siobhan Redmond.

Cyprus in the run up to the civil war of the 1970s...the threat of it hangs in the atmosphere like a fine mist. A terrible thing, war. Against this backdrop of war and violence, the island's inhabitants make the best they can of their lives, building friendships, falling in love, having children, watching people die, making mistakes. Maria Petrakis, however, flees a brutal marriage on the island where she has always lived for London and a new start.

A haunting debut novel of a young woman living on the edge in a Cornwall the tourists never see, struggling with the aftermath of family tragedy. Away from the hotels and holiday lets, there is an unseen side of Cornwall, where the shifting uncertainties of the future breed resentment and mistrust. Melody Janie is hidden. She lives alone in a caravan in Bones Break: a small cliff-top on Cornwall's north coast. She spends her time roaming her territory, spying on passing tourists and ramblers, and remembering. She sees everything and yet remains unseen.